Friday, May 27, 2016

I have a long time friend that has hassled me about my 'square dungeons' that I sometimes make. You know what I mean, squared off rooms in dungeons. He argues that this is silly and no one would spend the time required to dig out a perfectly squared room beneath the earth.I hereby call bullshit.

The Tomb of Ramesses II (Ramesses the Great). Not only is this one square but there are right angles all over the place! Perfectly straight tunnels! It looks like they got far in, had a little too much mooboo juice and goofed in a single angle and threw off the entire part after the antechamber. I bet ol' Ram was rolling in his sarcophagus.

Ok, and look at this one, this is a photo of the tunnel. Heck, they even squared off the ceiling!

Now, you might say "But Matt, maybe it was just this once, Rammy was stuck on perfect squares or something. He was a square dude!" Nay, I say nay sir. Look here at the Tomb of Merneptah.

Square shit everywhere. A nice sloping angle but straight as an arrow all the way down. The burial chamber:

The main hall:

Now you may be saying, "Yeah yeah, so a few people liked squares in Egypt, so what?" I say again Nay! Look at this shit, a full blown square-fucking-orgy at the largest of the Egypt tombs ever discovered, KV5:

This one is a freaking dead on copy of half the D&D maps out there. Hell, they count around 70 SQUARE fucking rooms. Someone had a serious hard on for squared corners and shit. Anyway, cool PDF here if you want to download, print and run/kill your friends in it:http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/sites/pdfs/kv05.pdf

Sunday, May 22, 2016

It has been a very busy month for me as I begin transitioning towards my retirement from the Army and I have had little time to focus on mapping or gaming. Luckily today it finally slowed down enough for me to throw together a quick map. For this one I went a slightly different direction than I most often take, opting for a digitally rendered background instead of my usual hand drawn hatching. Not sure which ones I prefer at the moment but I still have the original map and can easily go back and add in the hand drawn hatching if I wish. Which do you prefer?

The Temple of Gringordt & Yullbrin

In ages past, Gringordt and his younger brother Yullbrin saved the kingdom from ruin and sacrificed their lives so that others may continue. In their honor a grand temple was built in the nearby cliffside.

At the gated entrance, twin statues of Jorfjord, the goddess of fearlessness, stand guard. Once inside the temple was designed according to Father Vindordt Malfofjort's demands that no walls be form a straight line, thus curves are present everywhere in the temple. The walls curve up to great domes far above.

In the main chamber where visitors used to pay homage to the heroes, the domes reach far overhead to a height of ninety feet. Two massive statues of the brothers stand on raised pedestals, surrounded by reflection ponds for others to come and meditate upon their own actions and to deem if the heroes would consider them worthy.

Farther into the temple are various chambers that served as a study, a library, the serving monk's quarters and various other uses to keep the temple running smoothly. Deep inside the temple a small but important statue was erected to the father of the brothers. It is said that anyone praying before the statue will receive blessings in all their brave deeds.